Does alcohol consumption reduce human capital accumulation? Evidence from the College Alcohol Study

Jenny Williams, Lisa Powell and Henry Wechsler

Applied Economics, 2003, vol. 35, issue 10, 1227-1239

Abstract: It is often conjectured that a significant cost of youthful drinking is the future labour market consequences of having accumulated a lower stock of human capital. While several studies have investigated the effect of youthful drinking on the quantity of human capital stock accumulated, measured by years of education completed or high-school graduation, this paper investigates the effect of alcohol consumption on the quality of human capital stock accumulated as measured by college students GPA. Using data from the Harvard School of Public Health's College Alcohol Study, the indirect effect of the quantity of alcohol consumed on GPA is estimated through hours spent studying as well as the direct effect. Results show that the net total effect of alcohol consumption on GPA is negative for the sample of college students, and that the main effect is via a reduction in the hours spent studying. This finding confirms that high levels of alcohol consumption have an overall negative consequence for academic achievement, and hence future labour market outcomes.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0003684032000090735 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:35:y:2003:i:10:p:1227-1239

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/0003684032000090735

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().